Wired: Danger Room | October 27, 2010

Controlling robotic limbs with your brain is just step one. The Pentagon eventually wants artificial arms and legs to feel and perform just the same as naturally grown ones. Which means step two is hooking up those prosthetics directly into severed nerves. That’ll allow the wearer to detect subtle sensations, respond to the brain’s neural signals, move with unprecedented agility, and “incorporat[e] the limb into the sense-of-self.”

Over the last decade, the Pentagon has made remarkable progress in creating life-like prosthetic devices. And most of the advances are because of programs funded by Darpa, the far-out military research agency that’s also behind this latest project, called Reliable Peripheral Interfaces (RPI).

Already, Darpa has funded ventures like the DEKA Arm, which relies on a joystick-style interface, and used “targeted muscle reinnervation surgery” for prosthetics that transmit neural signals from a bundle of nerves in the chest. Darpa-funded researchers at Johns Hopkins have even started human trials on their Modular Prosthetic Limb, which transmits cues to an artificial limb using brain-implanted micro-arrays.

But the RPI program taps into key shortcomings that persist in even the most sophisticated prosthetic devices. Existing neural-prosthetic interfaces aren’t sensitive enough to provide myriad signals — prototypes currently transmit around 500 events a second — or offer users a robust degree of freedom. Not to mention that current neural platforms have short life spans and are tough to repair without invasive surgery, making them ill-suited to troops and vets in their 20s.

So Darpa’s after a prosthetic that can record motor-sensory signals right from peripheral nerves (those that are severed when a limb is lost) and then transmit responding feedback signals from the brain. That means an incredibly sensitive platform, “capable of detecting sufficiently strong motor-control signals and distinguishing them from sensory signals and other confounding signals,” in a region packed tightly with nerves. Once signals are detected, they’ll be decoded by algorithms and transmitted to the brain, where a user’s intended movements would be recoded and transmitted back to the prosthetic.

The end result would be a prosthetic that acts as a veritable extension of one’s own body. And a platform capable of accurately distinguishing between, and interpreting, different sensory signals — temperature, pressure, motion — would “allow the incorporation of the limb into the sense-of-self” and offer unprecedented freedom of movement for a prosthetic wearer.

The agency also wants an ultra-reliable platform, with an error rate of less than 0.1 percent and a lifespan of around 70 years. By comparison, current neural-recording interfaces last around two years before they need to be replaced. Sounds far-fetched, but Darpa’s already got one major lead: The agency’s new Neurophotonics Research Center will investigate fiber-optic prosthetic interfaces that can incorporate thousands of sensors into a single filament.

New Scientist |October 22, 2010

TO MAKE it harder for bioterrorists to build dangerous viruses from scratch, guidelines for firms who supply “custom DNA” are being introduced in the US.

The US and other countries restrict who can work with certain germs, but it might be possible to build some viruses from their genes. A number of firms supply DNA sequences to order. A 2005 investigation by New Scientist raised alarms when it found that only five out of 12 of these firms in North America and Europe always screened orders for sequences that might be used in bioweapons.

The US now wants firms to verify a customer’s identity and make sure they are not on a list of banned buyers. It also wants them to screen orders for sequences that are unique to Select Agents, a list of microbes the US deems dangerous.

However, scientists commenting on the draft rules earlier this year fear that sequences from microbes other than Select Agents might also be dangerous. The US Department of Health says not enough is known about them to say which ones should arouse a firm’s suspicions. Other potential weaknesses include the fact that the rules are voluntary, and that much custom DNA is made outside the US.

Wired.com | November 4, 2010

Fifteen thousand military computer networks became protected on November 3, 2010. Those ensconced within the informational phalanx called the event Cyber Command Day. They lived only to face a new challenge — the war against the Machines.

In truth, yesterday wasn’t quite so dramatic. The Department of Defense announced that the military’s new command for protecting its networks against cyberassault had achieved “full operational capability,” meaning the new U.S. Cyber Command, which opened for business in May, is 100 percent ready for duty, just a month behind schedule. Not that “full operational capability” fills in many of the blanks about when it’s acceptable for Cyber Command to attack a foreign network or how deeply it’ll be involved in the civilian internet.

Since Defense Secretary Robert Gates ordered its creation in 2009, there’s been a lot of confusion about just what Cyber Command will do. Its first leader, Army General Keith Alexander — who also commands the network-infiltration and surveillance experts at the National Security Agency — has portrayed it as a reactive organization, helping protect warfighting commands’ networks against cyberattacks and teaching the military good cyber-hygiene. And he’s repeatedly said the command will only get involved in the dot-gov and dot-com side of the internet during emergencies, when civilian government agencies come calling.

Only the boundaries of those emergencies remain undefined. And in practice, Cyber Command will routinely work with the Department of Homeland Security’s protectors of the civilian side of the internet. Last month, the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security inked an agreement to send Cyber Command officers to DHS to receive “requests for cybersecurity support” for “operational planning and mission coordination.”

The new “full operational capability” of the command doesn’t clarify any of that. Largely, it’s a bureaucratic shift: a new Joint Operations Center is now in existence, absorbing officers from two predecessor components of the command. An official statement promised vaguely that the command will “continue to grow the capacity and capability essential to operate and defend our networks effectively.”

Congress may choose to clarify what that means. A possible new leader of the House intelligence committee, Republican Mac Thornberry of Texas, has been a cybersecurity buff for years. In the Senate, Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins introduced a bill this spring that would give the president broad powers to declare a cyber-crisis and take charge of private firms’ networks. For now, the most conspicuous aspect of Cyber Command’s full functionality may be that it hasn’t yet become self-aware and waged a war of termination against humanity.

BBC News | November 4, 2010

Scientists in the UK have demonstrated a flexible film that represents a big step toward the “invisibility cloak” made famous by Harry Potter.

The film contains tiny structures that together form a “metamaterial”, which can, among other tricks, manipulate light to render objects invisible.

Flexible metamaterials have been made before, but only work for light of a colour far beyond that which we see.

Physicists have hailed the approach a “huge step forward”.

The bendy approach for visible light is reported in the New Journal of Physics.

Metamaterials work by interrupting and channelling the flow of light at a fundamental level; in a sense they can be seen as bouncing light waves around in a prescribed fashion to achieve a particular result.

However, the laws of optics have it that light waves can only be manipulated in this way by structures that are about as large as the waves’ length.

Until now, the most striking demonstrations of invisibility have occurred for light waves with a much longer wavelength – a far redder colour – than we can see. This is because it is simply easier to construct metamaterials with relatively large structures.

Even flexible metamaterial films have been shown off for this high-wavelength range.

For the far shorter waves that we can see, a metamaterial requires structures so tiny – nanostructures – that they push the boundaries of manufacturing.

“The first step is imagining first of all that this could be done,” said Andrea Di Falco of St Andrews University, the author of the paper.

“All the typical results have been reached in flat and rigid surfaces because this is the legacy of the procedures used to create nanostructures.”

So instead of building the typical stacks of the “fishnet” structures on hard, brittle silicon, Dr Di Falco used a thin polymer film.

“Typically what you do is stack several layers of fishnet structures and this all together will give you a metamaterial,” Dr Di Falco explained.

“What I’ve done here is fabricate a single layer – I lift it off so that at the end I am left with a self-standing membrane – and show that it has the properties required to create a 3D flexible metamaterial.”

Tents moment

Ortwin Hess, a physicist who recently took up the Leverhulme Chair in Metamaterials at Imperial College London, called the work “a huge step forward in very many ways”.

“It clearly isn’t an invisibility cloak yet – but it’s the right step toward that,” he told BBC News.

He added that the next step would be to characterise the way that the material’s optical properties change as it is bent and folded.

If the properties were sensitive to the movement, delicate manipulations of the films may make them useful for next-generation lenses in, for example, handheld cameras.

If instead they were impervious to bending and motion, the films might be useful for instance in contact lenses. What is more, the invisibility cloak could be that much closer – but Professor Hess added that is still some way off.

“Harry Potter has to wait still – that’s the huge goal,” he said.

“So far he’s had to live in a house and now he can live in something like a tent; it’s not the cloak that adjusts to his shape, but it’s a bit more flexible. Now we have to take the next step forward.”

The Australian | February 12, 2010

A ROBOT hand that could defuse bombs and luminous goo that flows around soldiers’ moving bodies but hardens against bullets sound like they should have been dreamt up for a James Bond film.

Among the companies to have received funding is d3o Lab, which has developed an “intelligent” liquid polymer that is easily malleable when moved slowly but whose molecules lock together and absorb force when hit by a projectile.

To demonstrate its properties, which have uses in a new generation of helmets and types of body armour, members of the d3o team wrapped the luminous orange goo round their hands and then struck them repeatedly with hammers. “The way that the material responds to your body movements, you get a duality of flexibility and protection,” Floria Antolini said.

Other innovations on show included the “Little Owl”, a lightweight drone that its developers hope will carry 20kg of surveillance equipment and power itself on solar energy for up to three months. The project has received £44,000 of funding for development.

Intelligent Textiles received £49,500 to help it to develop an army uniform that conducts electricity and computer data through internally woven “conductive yarns”. It allows troops to attach electrical equipment to powerpoints on their uniform, and to run internal heaters to keep them warm. The uniform runs off a central battery pack.

The MoD believes that it will remove 2kg from the weight of equipment for troops in combat and is also being considered by the Canadian military. Even if the material is pierced, officials claim, it will still conduct electricity around the damaged area without loss of power.

Crib Gogh, which makes extreme survival equipment, has already developed a durable solar-panel mat that folds into a backpack pouch and delivers enough power to run a computer. It is to be delivered to forward bases in Afghanistan.

Currently the MoD runs small generators at such bases whose fuel costs are 17 times the market price because of transport costs.

The MoD also spends millions of pounds on the purchase and transport of batteries for soldiers who use an average of eight AA batteries a day.

In a corner of the event, Sergeant Alex Simpson, 26, a bomb disposal expert with 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, the unit that tackles Taleban roadside bombs, tested a robotic hand developed by the Shadow Robot Company.

The hand mimics the movements of a controller wearing a sensory glove and can be used at a range of hundreds of metres. “Without a shadow of a doubt this could be used in the bomb disposal world,” he said, “and it would obviously be a massive leap forward from what we have at the moment.”

“Thanks man,” said the hand’s dreadlocked designer, Rich Walker, 39, a self-confessed Dungeons and Dragons fan. The company is also developing robotic limbs for use in radioactive environments. He expects the hand to be picking apart bombs on the battlefield within two years.

Wired Science | January 30, 2008

Hacking the climate to save ourselves from global warming’s worst consequences is a real possibility that we’ve explored several times here at Wired and elsewhere. But a new article in Foreign Policy by futurist Jamais Cascio takes a deep look at the geopolitical dilemmas presented by our prospective ability to intentionally alter the climate. He argues that the the “subtle, long-term aspects of geoengineering could make it appealing” to states looking for “alternative, unexpected ways of boosting their strategic power relative to competitors.”

The offensive use of geoengineering could take a variety of forms.
Overproductive algae blooms can actually sterilize large stretches of ocean over time, effectively destroying fisheries and local ecosystems.
Sulfur dioxide carries health risks when it cycles out of the stratosphere. One proposal would pull cooler water from the deep oceans to the surface in an explicit attempt to shift the trajectories of hurricanes. Some actors might even deploy counter-geoengineering projects to slow or alter the effects of other efforts.

Cascio also notes that it would be hard to detect geoengineering efforts designed to combat global warming or its effects with those intended to harm another country’s environment, which is a total bonus for military planners. He recommends that we both try to avoid a climate disaster, but just in case,  also “expand the global environmental sensor and satellite networks allowing us to monitor ecosystem changes—and manipulation.”

Note that Brandon has touched on some of these issues in an excellent article and blog post: Global Climate Engineering: Who Controls the Thermostat? and China Leads Weather Control Race.

And another interesting and/or deeply disturbing article …

Military Scientists Explore Planet-Hacking

Danger Room | March 17, 2009

Some of the military’s leading scientific advisers are looking into the idea of remaking the planet’s environment, to stave off global warming.

The idea of “geoengineering” — hacking the Earth’s climate, to prevent more radical changes — has been kicking around the scientific fringes for years. One scheme calls for adding iron to the ocean, to stimulate the growth of greenhouse gas-absorbing algae. Another for “loading the skies” with sulfate particles that “act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth.” A third, “covering the Arctic with dust.” Most mainstream climatologists have responded to the proposals with a combination of snickers and horror; the environment is such a chatoic system, they argue, that there’s no telling what such wholesale monkeying around with it will do.

In recent months, however, several “top institutions have launched efforts to study the subject,” the ScienceInsider blog notes. The Pentagon’s secretive JASON scientific panel is schedule to discuss geonengineering soon. The National Academies are hosting a workshop over the summer. The U.K. Royal Society should have study out by then, too.

The Defense Sciences Research Council, which advises Pentagon premiere research arm Darpa, is meeting today at Stanford University to explore geoengineering. But at least one of the scientists that’s scheduled to attend will be arguing against planet-hacking, not in favor of it.

“The last thing we need is to have Darpa developing climate-intervention technology,” Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science tells ScienceInsider.

He says he agreed to go to the meeting “to try to get Darpa not to develop geoengineering techniques. Geoengineering is already so fraught with social, geopolitical, economic, and ethical issues; why would we want to add military dimensions?” He adds, however, that he would support Darpa studying the topic in case an adversary were to use it.

Darpa has been working on environmental issues for years — putting money into algae-based fuel and trash-based “bioplastics.”
It’s part of a larger, far-flung, often-disjointed series of Pentagon initiatives to kick the fossil fuel habit, and reduce the military’s carbon footprint. Giant solar arrays, wind-powered bases, and garbage-munching generators in Baghdad are all part of the mix. We’ll see if a more radical global warming answer will soon be, too.

Wired: Danger Room | February 11, 2010

The Pentagon’s scientific fringe want to fast-track the quick and easy repair of wartime wounds, by eliminating one of the most important elements of tissue engineering – and replacing it with magnetic fields.

Last year, Darpa-funded researchers successfully generated human muscle tissue, and the agency requested proposals for a device that could pump out new body parts made with adult stem cells. Now, Darpa’s next-gen military medicine mission continues: the agency’s budget for the upcoming year includes $6.5 million for the creation of a scaffold-free tissue engineering platform, which would allow the construction of “large, complex tissues in vitro and in vivo.”

Tissue engineering has been around for years, and researchers have made major progress in the last decade. They’ve created lab-grown collagen, artificial bladders and even reconstructed damaged rabbit penises. But all of the progress has taken place with scaffolds: artificial platforms that provide structural stability while cells develop their own matrix, and eventually turn into fully functional tissues, organs, muscles, and even body parts. Dozens of different scaffolding methods have been developed, but all come with inevitable drawbacks. Usually, as Darpa notes, scaffolds can’t sustain tissues larger than 2-3 square millimeters, and it can be difficult to control how cells will react to the scaffolds, especially inside a living organism.

Instead of improving on scaffolds, Darpa wants to do away with them altogether, which would be a paradigm shift for tissue engineering. It’ll also require some major innovation. Last year, a research team at the University of Missouri and Yale tried to create tissue using agarose (a gel derived from agar) rather than a scaffold. They noted “major limitations,” and doubted cell viability in a lab environment, let alone a living organism.

Rather than replacing scaffolds with another substance, Darpa’s after “non-contact forces,” like magnetic fields or dielectrophoresis. The forces would control cell placement “in a desired pattern for a sufficient period of time to allow the cells to synthesize their own scaffold.” Without the limitations of scaffolding, it would be easier to create multi-cellular tissues, both in a lab and in the human body.

Darpa’s long-term objective is to reconstruct wounds in the war-zone, without the need for intensive surgery or the implanting of a specially-designed scaffold. In the short-term, they’re looking for a research team to develop a fully functional skeletal-muscle construct, complete with blood flow and a nervous system, in an animal model
See also:
Pentagon Plan to Regrow Limbs: Phase One, Complete

Wired: Danger room | February 6, 2009

The Pentagon’s pain beam weapon could get tougher, smaller, more powerful, and more mobile under a series of new research and development projects. And that could pave the way for the so-called “Active Denial System” to finally be sent to war.

The Pentagon first unveiled ADS in 2001. But in spite of repeated calls to send the system to Iraq for crowd control, the weapon has been held up by a series of legal, political, and technical issues. However, recent contracts may show the way forward for ADS, which zaps the target with a painful, but mostly harmless, microwave blast. The idea is to start building 20 of the revamped systems, beginning in three years.

First off, the pain weapons are going to get tougher. The military is  fit the system into an Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected (MRAP) armored vehicle that has become the infantry transport of choice overseas. System 1 of the ADS was mounted in a Hummer, System 2 is a containerized system that takes a sizable truck to haul it. Which sounds like a recipe for turning the beam weapon into a sitting duck. No wonder the military is calling for “studies for the integration of Directed Energy Non-lethal Active Denial Key Systems onto mine resistant armored personnel (MRAP) vehicles.”

Secondly, get more sophisticated. The current system is gigantic, partly because of the requirement for supercooling — System 1 would not function in very hot weather. So a Broad Area Announcement last month calls for for “alternative design concepts” to reduce the volume and weight of each of the System’s four components: the power generation/storage/conditioning, thermal management, beam source and antenna.

We know a little more about what’s going on from the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Program’s newsletter. It mentions that compact solid state beam sources are being investigated that are much smaller than the existing monster Gyrotron. They’re also looking at a sheet beam Klystron, an advanced amplifier technology which could “increase system power by six-fold.”

Last time the military tried to shrink the ADS to fit a smaller vehicle it was not a success;
they ended up with a beam which was only 400 watts (compared to about
100 kilowatts) and did not have the range and power needed. It was deleted from an experimental, nonlethal-weapons-packed vehicle program. On the other hand, the action-packed, game-show style field test of the low-power ADS looked amazing…but this time they will be aiming for better results.

All the previous Active Denial Systems have been built by Raytheon; the company even makes a commercial version, Silent Guardian. But this is a competitive contract, calling for at least two contractors and no favoritism.

Thirdly, it’s going to have a new name. The official documents have now started referring to the vehicle-mounted version of the pain ray as Mobile ADS, contracted to MADS. This is probably because other versions, such as the Portable ADS or PADS are in the pipeline. I always thought that “Active Denial” was a weak name, but calling it MADS may not be an improvement… cue a slew of bad insanity jokes. Perhaps Danger Room readers can suggest a better name, preferably based on an acronym?
Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/pain-beam-getti/#ixzz0cH75TbaW

…

US Army, we rain down the pain!

POPSCI.com – October 22, 2009

By Jeremy Hsu

Google’s Android operating system for cell phones could allow soldiers to track fellow squad members and even unmanned drones in real time on a map — as long as the humans and robots are on their buddy list.

That’s just one use of an Android-based application developed by defense giant Raytheon. The Raytheon Android Tactical System (RATS) costs just a few hundred dollars per user, as opposed to thousands for other systems, and allows anyone familiar with a smart phone to immediately start using it.

For instance, warfighters can watch their little drone buddy’s flight patterns on a map, or even get streaming video from the overhead aerial view. RATS also enables soldiers to send snapshots of suspects to the Department of Defense’s private data network for immediate identification, and could even include biometric scanners to capture fingerprints in the near future.

Raytheon plans to deploy RATS within the next month or so, after two years of development, according to Forbes. We’re looking forward to the future editions where users can control their robot swarms using basic body language.

WIRED Danger Room | 21 May, 2009

Round four of mankind’s epic battle against the walking, talking, killer machines starts tonight with the opening of Terminator Salvation. But humanoid robots aren’t confined to the movies. Turns out the U.S. military is backing research into robots that act like people, as well.

Today, the American armed forces’ main ground robots, the Foster-Miller Talon and iRobot’s Packbot, look like boxes with caterpillar tracks. It’s a nice, stable design. And it works well — which is why the military has sent thousands of ‘em over to Afghanistan and Iraq.

But these robots don’t easily fit into a world that we humans have constructed for creatures that operate like us. Door handles only work if you have something like a hand — and it has to be at the right height, too. Wheels and tracks get stuck on obstacles that legs just jump over. So it makes sense, sometimes, to shape a machine like a man.

One of the American military’s leading humanoid robots is Petman. Its job will be to testing chemical protection clothing for the U.S. Army. Petman is being built by Boston Dynamics, famous for its alarmingly lifelike BigDog robotic pack mule. Unlike earlier suit-testing robots, which needed external support, Petman will stand — and walk — on his own two feet.

“Petman will balance itself and move freely; walking, crawling and doing a variety of suit-stressing calisthenics during exposure to chemical warfare agents,” the company promises. “Petman will also simulate human physiology within the protective suit by controlling temperature, humidity and sweating when necessary, all to provide realistic test conditions. ”

A sweating robot? I had a flashback to the first Terminator movie:

“The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. These are new. They look human. Sweat, bad breath, everything….”

Petman needs to precisely simulate human movement, and the makers say it will be “the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person, with natural, agile movement.” The mecha-man is described as “BigDog’s Big Brother.” In fact, his bottom half is simply a pair of BigDog legs.

The program will consist of 13 months of design and 17 months of construction. The finished product being delivered in 2011. (Will they have to deliver Petman, or will they just give him the address and send him off?)

Meanwhile, Bucknell University researchers have received a $1.2 million grant for research and development of military robots, including a 5-foot-tall bipedal walker.

“It would move over curbs, up stairs and around rubble,” says Keith Buffinton, professor of mechanical engineering. “It could be used for surveillance and to gather information in areas you would not want to risk human life.”

The machine is already taking its first steps and is said to be better at balancing than a human. Professor Steven Shooter says they’ll be able to give the robot a head (complete with cameras) and “arm-like devices to assist with balancing.”

It’s unlikely that killer robots are walking among us just yet. But in a few years someone with a rather mechanical gait who refuses to take off his motorcycle helmet may not be quite what he seem.

Bonus feature… and spoiler alert…

There are new non-human Terminators in the new movie as well, including a variety of riderless motorbikes called Moto-Terminators. Once again, science fiction is only just ahead of science fact.

In 2005, one of the competitors in Darpa’s Grand Challenge for robot vehicles was an unmanned motor bike called Ghost Rider.

This was based on a 90-cc dirt bike outfitted with sensors, gyros for steering and video cameras for eyes. The designer, Anthony Levandowski of University of California, Berkeley, said that the two-wheel layout made it more maneuverable than the big Jeeps and trucks fielded by other competitors. It also as kept costs down. The whole thing cost just $150,000, which puts it in the bargain basement for military robotics.

An article in Berkeley Engineering’s newsletter later said that Levandowski “hopes to keep Ghostrider alive by continuing to refine its subsystems, like the obstacle avoidance software, for potential use in unmanned scouting and surveillance operations.”

Of course unmanned craft like the Predator also started out on scouting and surveillance duty — before someone decided to arm them.